Poems by Zoltán Lesi

(Translated by Marc Baczoni)Four, three, two

Don’t trust foreigners -I'd rather hug an alien. If they had arms, that is. They'dnever move in next door. It’s the Japs I hate the most, up at dawn, peacefully locking their doors at night.Never leaving the house alone.I can’t go out on the street any more, work from home, get my food delivered. The Japs would call that hikimori – but at least they don’t try and change you. My mum freaked out when I wouldn’t open the door, called the doctor, the two of thembattering away outside – the police had to come and take them away. That was four years, three months and two days ago. No one’s been to see me since. I’ve started learning Japanese so I can finally tell them just how much I hate them.

Ai Weiwei and the river crabs

Chinese propaganda says the people should live in harmony and unity, or hexie. The word sounds just the sameas river crabs (he xie), the Chinese symbolfor a community where criticism can only be formulated indirectly. Ai Weiwei invited people to his newly-finishedstudio, whose planning permissionthe city had just withdrawn. But his onlinefan-base, the river crabs, were not afraid; more than a thousand of them came to protest as the host was placed under house arrest in Beijing. A few months later, the municipal authorities had the artist’s studiodemolished with no prior warning.

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The Sukhumi Colony

The Sukhumi Colony was a Soviet experimental lab training space monkeys: eight of them made it into orbit.

The females they impregnated with Stalin’s sperm, to build the glorious Soviet future. I was one of them but I was born

too late to volunteer for Mars. When the separatists turned the town upside down, I got out. I dragged them off, the doctors experimenting on me, and locked them in a cage. Told them till they built me a spaceship they’d have nothing to eat but their own blood.

Later, I rounded up people from other cities, too, for the project. From time to time I would show themI was King Kong, so they'd behave. But now it seems of all things the flu’s going to finish me off before the launch site can be completed.

Zoltán Lesi (1982) lives and writes in Vienna/Austria and Budapest/Hungary. He published two books of poetry: Daphnis ketskéi (Daphnis' Goats), Merül (Diving) and a children’s book. His poetry is translated into German, English, Serbian and Polish. In 2016, he was distinguished with the Zsigmond Móricz, Mihály Babits and Akademie Schloss Solitude Scholarships.​

World’s first major ecopoetry award. With a first prize of £5,000 for the best single poem embracing ecological themes, the award ranks amongst the highest of any English language single poem competition. Second prize is £2,000 and third prize £1,000.